"Take me to your leader," said the voice above me.
"Huh?"
I looked up.
"Oh, Mr. Fogg?" said Adelaide Jones from the third desk in the news room.
"Mr. Fogg!" said the man at my desk.
Observe that word: Man. I have no intention to be sexist. But, damn it all, if I called the thing standing at my desk, as green as a celery stalk--and looking about as stringy, may I add--anyway, as I say, if I called that thing Woman, I would be up on charges of degenerate sexism, which is hardly my intention. Please: let me call him a man. He was anything but. But I would rather not call it a her. I did have the evidence before me, moreover, of his wearing clothing stereotypically male, at least in our society: blue overalls, blue work-shirt, and a straw hat, out from which his antennae poked. The clothes looked good, if a big baggy on this particular vegetable.
"Mr. Fogg!" he said, having learned my name from Ms. Jones. "Take me to your leader!
"I'm afraid this company bought out the Telegraph Leader a couple years back," I said. "The Daily Holograph's the only game in town, now."
"No, no!" the Celery Stalk said. "Your leader!"
I sighed. "I was afraid you said what you seemed to be saying. Let me tell you." I lowered my voice so Adelaide could feign not overhearing. "We don't brazenly say 'leader' around here, because it's offensive to the unempowered and to all people on lower rungs of business or social hierarchies."
He looked puzzled, insofar as a vegetable can look anything.
"Mr. Fogg?" Adelaide said. "If you don't mind me interrupting. I was just wondering if you had mustard."
"Actually, I do have mustard," I said, pleased to have been asked.
"Because I brought a folio, and it's pretty dry," she said.
"Sandwich" has fallen out of the vocabulary, out of deference to the Islanders.
I looked at the celery at my desk.
"Mr.--?"
"Extwizl," he said.
I think he said "Extwizl." It may have been Xtwzl, for all I know. I wish I did. Getting native spellings correct is so aujourd'hui.
"Well, Mr. Extwizl? Would you be so good as to take this jar to Ms. Jones?"
I was glad this folio business came up. I had noticed Adelaide the other day in the way a young, male reporter will notice a new, young, female reporter--that is, in a non-reportorial way.
Mr. Extwizl moved with a complex up-jiggle, down-jiggle, swish-over, down-swoop, and up-jiggle again, accompanied by numerous micro-swivels. All this movement caused the orchestral batons that protruded from his occiputs to bounce up and down.
"Hey, thanks," Adelaide said to the differently complexioned man, who handed her the mustand. "Say, that's a nice departicularizer you have there."
In the days before they realized how scientifically demeaning it was, people would have called it a "ray-gun."
"Take me to your leader," he said to her.
"On lunch hour?" she said. She shrugged, an uncommonly common expression of responsibility here at the Daily Holograph. "That would be Mr. Fogg." She pointed to me.
He returned to my desk, turning colors as he advanced. He shaded down to such a dark green he would have been invisible in a fern bar.
"Take me to your leader!" he said.
"You're still asking that, are you?" I said. "What you have to learn, Mr. Extwizl, is that we ignore people who use that word. You imply that the rest of us are followers! And this is a democracy, buster!"
"Very well!" said Extwizl. "You deny me!" He pointed his departicularizer at Addy. "If you don't take me to your leader immediately, I will zot your co-worker's ventral conic protuberances, beneath which I believe that vital organ, the beater, must lie!"
I put hands over eyes and elbows on desk. This walking vegetable was all suction cups.
"Mr. Extwizl," I said. "Please. Around a lady!"
"A lady?" he said.
"A woman."
"And what do you mean by that?"
"I mean she is a woman in just the sort of way I am a man. In the opposite way, that is. Get with it, my man."
"I am not a man. You are of two sexes?"
"Only one, myself."
"You don't have one leader?" said Extwizl.
"I'm about all there is, during lunch hour."
"But this one you call Ms. Jones is not your same sex?"
"Of course not. But I don't know what that has to do with anything." I said this even while glancing at her and realizing that, yes, indeed, it had a great deal to do with something. Maybe time had come to do something about that something.
When I looked back at our visitor I noticed his antennae had lost their quivering pertness. He reminded me of my philodendron at home. He could use a good watering.
"Mr. Fogg?" he said.
"Yes."
"Could you point me to your--facilities?"
"Certainly. Right over there."
Once he was out of sight I felt elated and calm, having decided on a course of action.
"So," I said to Addy, "I've been meaning to ask. How about supper tonight?"
"Hi, guys!" said Jodi Simmons, returning to her post at the news desk. Hardly a day passed but she cut short lunch to get back to work. A workaholic, we called her once, before people started wondering what workahol was and where they could get some.
She rubbed her buzz-cut head while looking over Addy's shoulder. "Any more news on those frigging meteors?"
"Meteorites, not meteors," I said. "Once they hit Earth, they're called--"
"Weird, isn't it," said Addy, reaching for the ringing phone. "They made such a big show coming down, then hardly a sound when they hit. You'd have expected the earth to shake or something."
"Lots of guys that way," Jodi said. "Hi, Ed."
The janitor had just appeared at my desk.
"You look a little green, Ed," I said.
Addy put her hand over the receiver. "Guy here claims things landed on his farm. Went to look, and someone gassed him. Stole his clothes."
"I was wondering about the mess in the bathroom, Mr. Fogg," said Ed, wiping his forehead with a hankie. "Want me to clean it up, or you folks want to snap pictures first?"
Ed, a big, solid, dependable mass of a man, sat squarely on the end of the human spectrum away from those who succumb to the sweats. Yet here he stood, mopping brow.
"What mess?"
"In the bathroom. Dead alien, looks like to me. Shot himself in the chest. Burnt a hole clear through."
"Poor guy. But you know, Ed, you should watch your language. Take that word 'alien.' It's got a pejorative ring. Why not just say, 'a person of foreign birth,' or call him by his country of origin? You could say Mexican, or Canadian, or Los Angelino. What was he?"
"Martian, is my guess."
"Oh, that person of color," said Adelaide.
"Must have had lunch at the Chinese Lantern," I said. "MSG turns me green, too."
"Then let's not go there," Addy said.
"A Martian cooked itself in the squatter?" whooped Jodi.
"You mean we have a date?" I said to Addy.
"Where's that Wippett Snolligan?" Jodi banged her desk. "Let's get holos of that baby! An alien, really, Ed?"
"Must have been that Extwizl," I said. "Very troubled man. He thought this was a fishing supply store and kept asking for leader."
Jodi hammered her desk again. "Get this on front screen! Get this out on the net!"
"Sorry," I said. "We put Screen One to bed. We held it up long enough as it is, waiting for more meteorite stuff. Put it in tomorrow's edition. Addy? Do we really have a date?"
"Only because you always look so spiffy. I mean, you know, the last guy who asked me out dressed in women's clothes, if you can believe that."
"Tomorrow!" Jodi rolled her eyes. "Holy Jesus on a hot plate, Fogg! Our very own walking meteor hops in the head and commits hari-kari and you don't want to stop the presses?"
"So should I leave the mess for now?" said Ed.
"Oh, and this Mr. Hock on the phone," said Addy. "He wants his clothes back."
"Kind of a mess, now," said Ed.
"You know, Jodi," I said, "it's pronounced hara-kiri. Or better yet, you should say seppuku, if you want the right word."
"Wippett!" cried Jodi. "Get in here lickety-split! Here's my headline, Fogg. ALIEN EXTWIZL SELF-SIZZLES! How's that?"
"I'd be glad to clean it up for you folks," said Ed, "if you just give the word."
"There's a word for that kind of headline," I said to Jodi. "And you think it's good enough leader to stop the presses?"
)
